I’m entitling this design Fresh & Me which might sound a little…lame to some, but I thought it was appropriate. It’s my second entirely hand-made WP theme, using some advanced techniques that I’ve learned along the way. I tried to keep it very simple, and then I was running into a ‘I really don’t like it’ so I changed it up some and this was the final concept.

The main color of choice is Pantone 380 C and the three fonts presented are Violation Script (logo), Gill Sans (headlines) and Helvetiva Neue (content). I was original going to use SRG Clean Archives but then stumbled upon an old post from DevLounge “Custom Archive Queries For WordPress” which came as a blessing, and now my Archives page will be simple and clean. Something that I’m looking forward to updating is my directory page. Other than linking to friends and designers that I admire, I’m hoping to compile a large list of resourceful sites for designers, old and new. Unfortunately I haven’t touched the portfolio section, but rest assured it’ll be there in the near future. I promise.

I thought I was finished with this theme a little over a week ago, but while reading digg and reading articles on design, I landed on an old article that made me realize that I had a lot of flaws. If you haven’t read RA Project’s “Things to Avoid: What Makes Me Nervous When Reading Your Blog” then you might want to read and double-check (followup with DevLounge’s “15 Design Decisions That Annoy People“).

With earlier designs, people had told me that my earlier designs had font sizes that were too large, so I returned to the  font-size of 12. One of the things that I agree with Simonne is the fact that a lot of sites do have small font sizes, and to me I kind of feel like 12 is small on the screen. I increased the font-size to 14 and I feel somewhat comfortable with that size.

The next object on the list was the RSS feed. I didn’t forget it, I had it on the sidebar as just a text-link. While digging for inspiration few months back, I had seen a lot of sites with kickass RSS feed buttons, and so I figured that I’d try creating my own and it might not be the best button ever created but it works, and it’s there!

I spent the a few hours Labor Day weekend configuring my comments section so that they appeared cleaner, and then I learned that I was one, of many, that did not have a “subscribe to comments” feature. I was getting frustrated when I couldn’t find out how to do this on my own via wordpress.org, but luckily I found Mark Jaquith’s Subscribe to Comments plugin.

And the last thing that I never really used was “Related Posts”. For something that doesn’t take a lot of effort (it’s a plugin for christ sakes), I really don’t know why I never bothered with it. I guess my reason was being lazy, and that’s not a good reason.

And with that said, I am planning to write an article on (Re-)Designing a Blog. It’ll be my first real article! Also, my previous readers of my personal blog faraway words, you’ll have to register in order to view my daily rants. I apologize for the inconvenience, however I want to make my blog more professional.